Hope he has a giant photo of Bin Laden with his eyeball hanging out set up as a backdrop for the speech, just in case the very low-information voters watching at home are slow on the uptake about what they’re supposed to glean from this speech.

President Barack Obama is in Afghanistan for a whirlwind visit that will culminate in a live, televised address to the American people.

Obama is expected to sign a strategic partnership agreement shortly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.Obama’s scheduled to speak to the nation just after 7:30 p.m., eastern time, from Bagram airbase.

Pool, which assembled Monday night at Andrews, has been under an embargo preventing reporting of the trip up til now.

Obama left at 12:09 AM Tuesday morning. And arrived at Bagram at 10:20 pm local time.

It was smart to key this to the partnership agreement since now he’ll have a big stage to announce a significant drawdown of American troops, which should please swing voters. You can see the political message coming: We won in Afghanistan by killing Bin Laden and destroying his network so now we can responsibly and victoriously withdraw. It’s a two-fer — an end-zone dance over Al Qaeda’s deterioration and an unofficial declaration that the war is ending and the boys are coming home. Shrewd politics. If he pulls out Bin Laden’s empty skull and sets it on the podium, you can probably call the election right now.

Stand by for updates.

Update: Before he declares victory, can we get a final accounting on just how many Afghan soldiers have fired at their American mentors? According to the AP, the Pentagon’s been conspicuously quiet about non-lethal “green on blue” attacks.

I’d be keen to hear O’s and Panetta’s reaction to this Guardian piece too before those ephemeral peace talks with the Taliban start heating up again:

Documents found in the house where Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago show a close working relationship between top al-Qaida leaders and Mullah Omar, the overall commander of the Taliban, including frequent discussions of joint operations against Nato forces in Afghanistan, the Afghan government and targets in Pakistan…

The news will undermine hopes of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan, where the key debate among analysts and policymakers is whether the Taliban – seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda – might once again offer a safe haven to al-Qaida or like-minded militants, or whether they can be persuaded to renounce terrorism…

“Questions and issues come up. They don’t see eye to eye on everything but it’s clear they understand they have an interest in co-operating [on attacks against Nato, Afghan government and Pakistani targets],” the source said. “Of those engaged in the conversation, two [Zawahiri and Omar] are still alive today and there is no reason to believe that either has substantially changed his views in the last year.”

The frustration—or, even anger—within the SEAL community is real, and has been brewing for months, particularly among a politically conservative core of operators. It started immediately after the raid, with questions among the Special Forces and intelligence community of whether the president should have waited to announce the kill to exploit the intelligence cache at Osama’s compound. It simmered after a Chinook helicopter was shot down, killing 30 Americans, 22 of them Navy SEALs from Team Six…

Over the past few days, I’ve reached out to a number of SEALs, both active duty and former. Most active duty SEALs were reluctant to go on the record venting or praising their boss, but one of the most interesting responses I received from an operator was to direct me to Leif Babin, a SEAL who left active duty last year.

Babin, who runs the consulting firm Echelon Front, wrote a little noticed op-ed in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal four months ago. The headline: OBAMA EXPLOITS THE NAVY SEALS. Babin took aim at “the president and his advisors, writing: “It is infuriating to see political gain put above the safety and security of our brave warriors and our long-term strategic goals.”

This isn’t going to get Barry Hussein Soetoro re-elected. It’s going to piss people off and look at repulsive as the Paul Wellstone memorial service that was turned into a democrat campaign rally on national television.

It’s going to boomerang. BIGTIME. Obama’s campaign is about as incompetent as his administration. Which is logical. Romney is showing so far that defeating this guy IS ACTUALLY EASY, all you have to do IS TRY. Which McCain never did, not for one second.

Ha, ha, ha. Must have planned this stunt before the story spun out of control and became “Obama the Great Ego.” He’ll speak tonight…and all day tomorrow his detractors, from Navy Seals to the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, will be talking about what a douchebag he is. Too funny. You blew it, Barack. You went too far, pulled the trigger on this too early. As usual.

No, you can’t call the election right now if he pulls out the skull. I have faith that while America might have been stupid enough to elect this tool, they’re smart enough to recognize garbage when it’s staring at them from their T.V..

It’s hard to understand what level of ego it takes to continue to double down on positions that are clear losers.

Is he going to wear a t-shirt with the words “I killed Obama” with an arrow pointing up at his face in the front, and “Mitt Romney would not have” in the back, or did his handlers think that would be a bit too much?

we’ve always known that barry and his vast team of operatives/media/hollywood types would spare nothing to re-elect the guy with the smile.

Roger Simon pretty much nails it:

Socialism is a rich man’s game.

Oh, sure, random overheated (sometimes impoverished) Occupiers agitate for their version of economic equality, possibly gumming up the works at the Lincoln Tunnel, but the real financial justice action comes from the wealthy – or so it would seem.
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And I’m not just talking about Hollywood, where George Clooney is full steam ahead on a putative record-breaking ten million dollar fundraiser for Barack Obama, or the laughably meretricious theatrics of the “Buffett Tax” that no one would pay anyway, but across the nation.

According to a book about to be released, The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign by Brendan J. Doherty, Obama has held more fundraisers than all presidents since Nixon combined.

What does this have to do with socialism? A lot, really, because what Obama promises – especially in his second term — is a socialism of permanent elites, a kind of new, very American, version of the old Soviet-style nomenklatura. And those who are in it will get to stay in it (via government support) as social mobility, aka the American Dream, diminishes or disappears.

This was what socialism ultimately was all about, indeed is all about, the preservation of nomenklaturas, whether of Hollywood, the media, union, and bureaucratic leadership or what remains of selected industry. Keep hoi polloi out.

We won in Afghanistan by killing Bin Laden and destroying his network so now we can responsibly and victoriously withdraw.

Yes, if we’re willing to ignore the fact that the Taliban is still there, the opium fields are still there, the corruption and tribal rivalries are still there, and thousands of American lives and a trillion dollars later, it’s still the same $hithole from which the 9/11 attacks were launched.

Also, we haven’t destroyed AQ; they’ve just moved operations to places like Yemen and Libya.

I keep seeing conservative bloggers commend the president for OBL, which I sense they are doing because they feel they “have to”. But I disagree with their logic and I’ll tell you why:

Killing OBL was not high on Obama’s priority list. In fact, the only reason we even got him was because our intelligence crews lucked out when one of OBL’s couriers made a mistake – not because Obama championed some task force with the mission. Obama then spent many hours debating a decision that Panetta and others (including Hillary) pressed hard on him to commit to. Shockingly, he felt the best way to handle this decision was to put it out of his mind for a few more hours with a nice game of golf. Meanwhile, back at the White House, we see a picture of the situation room in which all the top dogs have been sitting there for hours with their laptops analyzing photographs and other intel working hard to assess the situation and all contingencies. Only 20 minutes before the raid begins does Obama feel the need to break away from the tee box to join his crew who, like he should have been, were dutifully engaged in the matter. In order to disguise the fact that Obama is still wearing his golf gear, he is given a jacket and seated in some lower corner chair like a dunce (anyone else find it odd that the CiC wouldn’t be sitting at the head of the table?). Yet the president now wants to come out and pretend like this was all his doing and that nobody else but he had the stones to pull off such a bold move that, quite frankly, he was simply lucky to cash in on. We’re saddened but not surprised by this. After all, we know how this man rolls. If a team of scientists were to independently discover a cure for all cancers with no help from the government and only private funding and it became the biggest story of the year, anyone here doubt that the president would try to claim credit for it somehow to boost his re-election chances? I mean, wasn’t this a guy who once claimed that his mere election would result in lower ocean levels?

Furthermore, our Special Forces and highest commanders were pretty upset that Obama then decided to spike the football immediately after OBL’s death simply to score political points – a move which essentially negated the treasure trove of intel that was recovered at the scene. But seeing as it’s really the only major accomplishment (assuming the health care law is found unconstitutional) in a 3-year presidency which desperately needed the boost at the polls, I can see why he made the flawed decision, though I don’t agree with it.

Sure, call it a “gutsy call” to take out OBL by sneaking into Pakistan if you want. But I argue that the call to execute the mission is one that 99% of Americans would have also made. Yes, we’re glad OBL is gone. But Obama is trying to ride a wave he didn’t start. He promised in 2008 that he would “change” everything in politics and usher in a magical era of fixes, yet all that’s happened under his watch is the death OBL – and OBL’s death is not going to be enough to offset all his other failed promises and everything else that has gotten worse with this country and her economy in the past 3 years.

Prediction: There will be a Times Square ticker tape parade, or something similar, to celebrate the end of the GWOT sometime before the election. Or are they conscious of a “Mission Accomplished” sign moment?

Am I the only one besides AllahP who has absolutely no problem with Obama rubbing it in the faces al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Pakistani ISI, live from Afghanistan??? Sure its a campaign event aimed at a domestic audience. But it is also a prime-time middle finger to those terrorist, Islamist goat-****ers who attacked our country ten years ago.

You know that every single Taliban or Al Qaeda affiliated person in all of Afghanistan is communicating with someone, talking to someone, asking someone, “This is our chance. What can we do? Who is close? We need to make a statement. An eye for an eye, leader for leader. What do we need to do to accomplish something here and how do we need to do it? We need these answers now.”

Stupid to announce his arrival so early. I’m gonna be surprised if he gets out of their without some sort of hitch. All the articles about Al Qaeda needing to do something. Compromised secret service at the moment. Spring offensive time. And 5-6 hours of preparation?

Just seems like wreckless, shoot from the hip, pridefulness. It’ll be ok, I’m Barack Obama, I can do anything.

Am I the only one besides AllahP who has absolutely no problem with Obama rubbing it in the faces al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Pakistani ISI, live from Afghanistan??? Sure its a campaign event aimed at a domestic audience. But it is also a prime-time middle finger to those terrorist, Islamist goat-****ers who attacked our country ten years ago.

Lawdawg86 on May 1, 2012 at 3:47 PM

‘prime time’ where, the trip was timed to land at local midnight and they’ll be wheels up before it’s light enough for the locals to see that big blue white and silver taget.

Hope he has a giant photo of Bin Laden with his eyeball hanging out set up as a backdrop for the speech, just in case the very low-information voters watching at home are slow on the uptake about what they’re supposed to glean from this speech.

Was just about to ask the same thing. Guess he’s dyeing his hair, because in other photos, he is not almost all-white… ooops, is that racist? Maybe he thinks it adds an air of dignity and statesmanship, which of course, it does not.

This guy never goes to visit the troops and takes credit for their valiant deeds.

Then a campaign opportunity pops up and suddenly he’s there?

How disgusting and disingenuous.

Marcus Traianus on May 1, 2012 at 3:50 PM

And people see this.

It’d be one thing if Obama were showing up to pay tribute to the troops and humble himself a little. But we know he’s incapable of that.

Instead he’ll be paying tribute to HIMSELF.

That’s a BIG turn off. Especially given how long this war has gone on now (over 10 years) and the fact that NEARLY EVERYONE has a family member or a friend who DID go over there and sacrifice and knows that it wasn’t Obama first down the zip line, rifle in hand…

Drudge has been hinting that Obama was on a secret trip all day since he had “gone missing” from DC. This is just another “check me out” grandstand victory lap on the anniversary of Bin Laden’s death-and it comes after trashing Romney in a press conference with the Japanese prime minister-suggesting Romney would not have done so bold a deed.

Although he made the final decision, Obama was exactly like the rest of us (with the sole exception of Seal Team Six) a SPECTATOR. A spectator who climbed on the shoulders of the tactical planners, the forward base operations personnel, the pilots and the Seals-to claim victory and to aggrandize himself while concurrently diminishing the political opposition. What a contemptible POS he is.